Sam Allardyce fears there could "very shortly" be no English managers in the Premier League.

The Sunderland boss has challenged top-flight boards to scour the lower divisions for more home-grown talent such as Eddie Howe, who has guided Bournemouth to Premier League safety this term.

Allardyce has dragged the Black Cats away from relegation this season too, but can already see the day when England's top flight contains no English managers.

The Premier League's executive chairman Richard Scudamore defended attempts to boost the representation of English bosses but conceded he "was not going to contradict" Allardyce's view.

"The way it's going at the moment I can see there would be no English managers in the Premier League, and that could be very shortly as well," Allardyce told BBC Radio Five Live's Sportsweek programme.

"The foreign managers have made us better, no doubt, with the extra challenge, but as far as I'm concerned with all the courses I've seen, all I've seen and done abroad, we train our guys and educate our guys very, very well.

"But they just need a chance. Maybe one day it will happen, but maybe it will be too late by then.

"If you look across the rest of the European countries and you see how many of their own they look after, it's quite staggering compared to ourselves.

"We do not in any way shape or form look after our own, and not only is it just three English managers, it's six British in total.

"An English manager getting into the Premier League now would have to do it via promotion from the Championship."

Premier League figurehead Scudamore urged more of England's elite clubs to back home-grown managers.

"I do hope that some clubs give more English talent a chance, because it is very, very easy to go and pick a foreign manager who looks like he's had relative success in another league," Scudamore told Sportsweek.

"And as we've seen this season relative success in another league is not necessarily any indicator that you're going to be successful in what is the toughest league in many ways of all, the Premier League.

"Anybody as successful as Sam, you have to respect what he's saying and therefore I'm not going to contradict him.

"He is in a privileged place, because at least Sam is doing something about it. He's one of the leading lights of the League Managers' Association, and he knows players and managers need to take their education seriously.

"And Sam is absolutely driving, along with Richard Bevan and others at the LMA, a continuous development programme, that gives British managers the best chance to be able to compete at the highest level."